Belongings of missing WikiLeaks associate Kamphuis found in Norway: police

FILE PHOTO: The logo of the Wikileaks website is pictured on a smartphone in this picture illustration taken in Tokyo November 29, 2010.

Reuters/Toru Hanai/File Photo

OSLO (Reuters) - Norwegian police have found belongings of missing WikiLeaks associate Arjen Kamphuis at sea in northern Norway more than three weeks after he disappeared.

The Dutch cybersecurity expert has been missing since Aug. 20, when he left his hotel in the northern Norwegian town of Bodoe, where he had been on holiday. The belongings were found by a man out fishing on Tuesday in an area to the east of Bodoe.

"Due to the ongoing investigation the police do not at this time wish to release any information about which specific items that have been found," police said in a statement on Wednesday.

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Police have previously said they have no main theory about his disappearance, and there was no indication as to whether Kamphuis was the victim of a criminal act.

WikiLeaks was launched in 2006 as a web-based outlet for would-be leakers. In July 2010, it released more than 90,000 classified U.S. military documents on the war in Afghanistan and before publishing 400,000 more secret U.S. files on the Iraq war. The two leaks represented the largest security breaches of their kind in U.S. military history.

It followed these up with the release of 250,000 secret diplomatic cables from U.S. embassies around the world, angering U.S. politicians and military officials, who said the unauthorized dissemination would put lives at risk.

The discovery of Kamphuis' belongings was being investigated and the police are asking the public for any information about his movements in the area.

Investigators searched the area with assistance from local Red Cross and a rescue vessel.